Ask for the Moon

When Gene Cernan took his final step on the Moon on December 14, 1972, he expected humanity to return soon.

- KUMAR ABISHEK

“We leave as we came, and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind,” said the commander of Apollo 17.

More than 53 years later, his footprints remain untouched in the lunar dust as the last human marks there. Between July 1969 and December 1972, starting with Neil Armstrong, 12 Apollo astronauts walked on the Moon’s surface.

In the years since, space exploration has leapt ahead: Spacecraft on comets; telescopes capturing black-hole shadows; a small helicopter (nicknamed Ginny) flying on Mars. Yet getting humans back to the Moon has been surprisingly tough.

Part of the explanation lies in why Apollo happened at all. The lunar race was driven primarily by geopolitics. Determined to beat the Soviet Union, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) mobilised resources on a scale rarely seen in civilian programmes, hitting nearly 5 percent of the federal budget at peak. Engineers pushed hard, launches came fast, and risks that we wouldn’t take today were accepted.

With the race over, that drive faded. The world of Saturn V — the powerful launch vehicle developed for the Apollo programme — faded, too. Dedicated factories closed, suppliers left, and engineers moved on. Recreating that capability decades later has proved much harder and costlier.